


the dull gold of transforming suffering

by lyhoradka



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, fairy tales on mars, juno's teeth kink, no i don't know how spinning wheels work and i am not about to find out, rumplestilstskin au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 06:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17177276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyhoradka/pseuds/lyhoradka
Summary: “Didn’t you know?” Min Kanagawa croons to the reporters after Juno Steel saves her step-son and dooms her step-daughter to prison. Her painted lips are turned down with grief, but her eyes are bright as pennies in the sun. “Our detective can spin straw into gold.”Somewhere between television channels, the metaphor gets lost.(Rumpelstiltskin AU)





	the dull gold of transforming suffering

**Author's Note:**

> Happy belated birthday to my fave PI and here's to 2 years without Peter. cheers, lads

To the Kanagawas, truth is a malleable thing. Perhaps they, too, have fey in their blood for the way they seem to speak a thing and make it so. Reality television become reality – millions of witnesses across millions of screens, blurring the line between entertainment and news.

“Didn’t you know?” Min Kanagawa croons to the reporters after Juno Steel saves her step-son and dooms her step-daughter to prison. Her painted lips are turned down with grief, but her eyes are bright as pennies in the sun. “Our detective can spin straw into gold.”

It’s the kind of line that pushes her to the front page. She looms as a tragic figure at the head of the Kanagawa empire, owing it all to a miracle-worker detective who had been clever enough to shove a dozen confidentiality clauses into his contract. A marvel, the Kanagawas whisper over every photo of Cassandra paraded around her own trial like a prize goat. A gift, they say, as Cecil smiles winningly and leans closer to the microphone: “Of course, no one _else_ would have been able to do it. He’s really something special, darlings.”

Somewhere between television channels, the metaphor gets lost.

* * *

 

In the darkness, Juno’s heartbeat is loud and his palms itch. The edges of the crystal bluntly dig into his skin where he grips it like a lifeline. He wonders what he’ll taste when he takes the plunge and puts the thing in his mouth – his own sweat or poison or ancient Martian dust.

He is holding the crystal to his mouth when he runs out of time. Gloved fingers wrap around his wrists, gripping so hard that they almost shatter the bone. Juno hears a shout – it may be his own or someone else’s, but it doesn’t matter. A swift kick to his knee and he’s on the ground, nothing there to catch his fall. The floorboards stink of dust and rotting earth under his nose.

When he wakes up, he thinks he must still be in that house. The scent of earth is drier: dead but not yet rotting. It’s possible that they deposited him onto a cleaner section of the floor, or brought him to the second story where the floorboards have avoided most of the moisture.

As Juno opens his eyes, he learns that it’s the smell of straw.

Juno had always imagined that straw would be yellow like corn, but it is bleached and dull and drained of color like a painting washed off by a spilled glass of water. It sits in a pile in a corner, spilling into the rest of the room as though Juno is the uninvited guest in its domain. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Juno mutters.

Then he sees the spinning wheel.

Like a beast out of fairy tales, it looms in the center and gleams as though newly polished. The spindle reaches upward, sharp and wicked. The rich chocolate of its wood is so vibrant that Juno has difficulty reconciling its presence with the dry straw. They shouldn’t be in the same story. They shouldn’t be here at all.

Juno thinks of the bedtime story from Earth about the princess who fell asleep for a hundred years after pricking her finger on a spindle, and wonders if that is what happened to the Martians.

 “Juno Steel,” says a voice that carriers from beyond the door, reaching in through Juno’s ear and into his guts. “Our lady of miracles.”

Like everything here, the door seems ancient, and it groans as it swings open from the outside. The person who steps inside looks like she might eat him alive, if she were the kind of creature that ate. She stands still, but her hands twitch. Just looking at her makes Juno want to scream.

“Why am I here?” he manages to choke out. His voice comes out as a rasp. Then, an afterthought: “Who are you?”

The creature seems to find this amusing. “What are you looking for? A name?” She snorts, the idea ridiculous. “Call me whatever you like, though I doubt you’ll be calling for me at all.”

Juno thinks, _What the fuck_.

“You are a guest in my home,” the creature coos. “The terms are these: here is the straw, and here is the wheel. It is said that you perform miracles. It is said that you pluck gold from straw as though it has always been there. Your payment is your life. You have until the sun comes up again tomorrow.”

“You want me to – what?” Even with the terror licking its way up his spine, Juno laughs. He flicks his eyes around the cell desperately, searching for any signs of the Kanagawas’ cameras, any crack in the wall that he can claw at. “That’s impossible.”

The creature nods as though he’s made a good point. “Yes, impossible.” She grips the door and it seems to splinter underneath her hands, soft as plywood. As though it, too, cowers in submission. “But not for you.”

After she is gone, Juno takes the time to pace the perimeter of his cell and, upon finding absolutely nothing that will get him out of here, he takes the time to panic. No comms, no weapons, no chance that he’ll pull a pile of gold out of his ass by morning. Of the thousands of times that he’d imagined his death, alone in a cell with a cow’s dinner was not something he ever anticipated.

When total darkness falls, it comes as a surprise. And Juno knows without a doubt that he is no longer alone.

The figure perches on the seat of the spinning wheel with the air of someone lounging on a divan, cocktail in hand, and not a worry in the world. The artificial light from the outside (streetlights? a porchlight?) is far brighter than it should be. The person shifts and leans forward, elbows on his knees, and Juno inhales sharply at the sight of Rex Glass.

Here’s the thing: Juno is a lady hooked on stories, on details, on plots that are strung together with thread. His heart lives on the bottom of wells in fairy tales. He’s an investigator. And so, he knows: sometimes the correct conclusion is so obvious that it seems almost stupid to believe it. Sometimes the plot points are connected with a straight line.

Glass watches Juno with such a keen intensity that Juno has to fight a shiver. The silence stretches out, thick as taffy. At last, Glass says, “Juno.”

It almost sounds alien. The Rex Glass that Juno remembers is bright and laughing and flirtatious, and he says Juno’s name like he’s sharing a private joke with himself. Ju-no. Juuu-no. Like he’s licking ice cream off a spoon.

But the way Juno’s name sounds in this room – the shape of Glass’ mouth around it, the way the straw muffles it, the way it spins on the spindle – like gold; oh, it strips the meat from Juno’s bones.

“Ah,” Juno says, the knowledge settling in his gut. “You know my name.” He lets the full weight of that hang in the air, and then adds, “But what’s yours?”

The man who called himself Rex Glass smiles very slowly, showing all of his teeth. His canines glint in the dim light. The sight of them against his bottom lip makes something tighten in Juno’s gut.

“Juno,” Glass half-sings again. “I think you’ve used that brilliant mind of yours to piece all of this together enough to understand that I won’t be telling you that.” He makes a show of looking around the cell, spreading his arms as if to say, and _what’s this?_ “But that doesn’t matter. I see you find yourself in quite a predicament.”

Juno’s mouth twists. “Haven’t you heard? I can spin straw into gold.”

It only makes Glass smile wider. He lowers his voice to a half-whisper, a sweet levity infecting his tone: “What if I offered you help, Detective Steel? What if I spin all of this straw for you?”

Juno doesn’t mean to laugh, but it spills out of him like a flood. He’d half-imagined that this was a rescue, or at the very least a quick and clean end. He hadn’t thought to trick his way into fulfilling the creature’s demand.

“You’re not serious,” he says. “I don’t know what the fuck you are, but that is literally impossible.”

Glass rises from his perch and plucks a handful of straw. He folds his long body in a mocking bow, eyes never leaving Juno’s. “If the lady demands a demonstration.” Without waiting for a reply, he returns to the spinning wheel. He settles into it like a cradle, spins the wheel, and the straw seems to dance off his fingers. Juno watches mutely as it glitters and weaves, the color rushing into its strands. In the half-darkness, the straw is a beacon. Glass coaxes it onto the spindle, then holds out to Juno a perfect handful of gold thread. He shoots that smile again, all-teeth.

Juno opens and closes his mouth a few times. He wishes that he felt shock instead of the nauseating sense of the world clicking into place, like this is something that he’d always known before he could remember, before he was ever here at all. “Who are you?” he rasps out.

“Someone who will help you, Juno.”

“Just like that?”

Glass arches an eyebrow. “Of course not _just like that_. This is fey magic, not a charity service.”

Juno sucks in another shuddery breath through his mouth and doesn’t miss the way Glass’ eyes flick to it. “What do you want in return, then?”

Glass’ gaze lingers, incriminating, and when he looks up he seems nearly lost for the first time. “I... Your watch. Your watch will do.”

“You want my watch,” Juno says slowly, “that I bought for ten bucks, in return for a pile of gold.”

Another silence. Over the clamor of his heart, all he thinks of is the bone-cut of Glass saying his name. The silence feels almost like that – like an invocation.

“Well,” Glass says at last, rueful. “I never said I drive a hard bargain.”

* * *

 

Glass spins the straw and, eventually, they talk. _Is it true what you said about your brother?_ he asks, and Juno says yes. _Do you want water?_ he asks, and Juno says no. _Why did you keep chasing the mystery of that crystal?_ he asks, and Juno laughs.

“How do you know about that?” Juno leans his head against the cold stone, watching Glass through his eyelashes. In the honey-thick light, gold and straw stand out against Glass’ back like the wings of a trapped angel.

There is no way to tell the time – even his bargained watch is broken – but he thinks he might have known Glass for a thousand lifetimes.

“I was supposed to get it for her,” Glass explains. “But then you snatched it from under my nose. Or rather, you and Detective Strong.”

Juno decides not to be surprised that Glass knows about Alessandra. “Her?”

Glass shrugs, eyes on the straw. “Some calls her Miasma. At least, that’s the first name I heard when I started working for her.” He grimaces. “Though never to her face. I tend to avoid looking at her face.”

Juno sits up. “The creature who wants the gold?”

“Yes, something like that,” Glass says. “I wish I’d asked more questions when she first sent me after the mask, but I’m afraid I didn’t have the luxury of anything that might pass off as disobedience. And by the time I’d gained enough leeway and found my way to the crystal, there you were.” He smiles, glancing up at Juno quickly. “Like a bad penny.”

“Believe it or not, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”

Glass shakes his head, but doesn’t look up again. “And how will you find your way out of here?”

“Maybe I’ll tell Miasma that I work for Dark Matters.”

Juno expects a smile, or at the very least an eye roll. Instead, Glass frowns. “I did not lie,” he says, certain as the dawn. His voice rings like a bell in the cell. Until now, Juno had forgotten that he wasn’t human.

No, not that – Juno had forgotten that he was fey.

 _Can you lie?_ he wants to ask. His gut clenches again, the same way it does every time he sees Glass’ canines, his impossible magic, the raven darkness of his hair. _Do you steal babies? Can you pull someone from this world and replace them with a shade?_

“No,” Juno says. “You didn’t lie. You just let me believe that ridiculous cover story about – what? The occult?” He scoffs, but he can’t help appreciating the irony. He remembers the mask, and Glass’ fingers over the door handles. “Aren’t there rules about theft in the world of the fey?”

“I do not steal, Juno,” Glass tells him, soft. “I bargain.”

* * *

 

Eventually, Juno falls asleep. And eventually, the sun rises, and the door opens, and the creature that is sometimes called Miasma stands in front of seven spools of gold thread with not a single strand of straw in sight.

 Juno looks at her and rises to his feet. “Let me go,” he demands. He is woozy with unexpected hunger and a lack of sleep, but his voice does not waver. _Please_ , he thinks. _Please let me go_.

“Oh, Juno Steel,” Miasma says, and her eyes burn.

* * *

 

On the second night the sun slips below the horizon, and Rex Glass materializes like a ghost.

This cell is larger than the last, and holds twice as much straw. Juno wonders if it is enough straw to drown in. Maybe he can close his eyes, inhale the dead grass, and disappear.

“A bargain, Juno Steel,” Glass says, voice like an autumn leaf.

Juno meets his gaze. He thinks he can play this game – he had learned the rules last night. “A lock of my hair, in exchange for your skill,” he says.

Glass stills, eyes like saucers. In the space of a breath, Juno wonders if he’s overplayed his hand.

“A deal is a deal,” Glass says at least. His eyes are still wide, almost feverishly bright. He does nothing to hide the fey in his skin, but Juno has never seen anyone look more human. It’s –

Glass uses the spindle to take his payment. He braces his fingers against Juno’s temple as he lifts a few strands from the crown of his head and slashes. Juno doesn’t see the strands that Glass slips into his pocket; he is too busy staring at the wall, his arm on fire where Glass presses against it. Glass steps away.

“She will not let you go,” Glass says. Then, after a pause so short that Juno might have imagined it: “I would not wish to, if I were in her shoes. We are all wicked and rotten, Juno Steel. We are all hungry for something.”

Juno closes his eyes.

* * *

 

On the third night, Juno is placed in a room with a window. The ceiling vaults high over his head, filled to the top with straw. He is given a bed and a sink to wash himself, and a small table with his dinner.

A permanent prison.

That is how he knows that Miasma does not intent to let him go. “Third time’s the charm,” she croons, turning the key. “Maybe you’ll go free tomorrow, little bird.”

He wonders how high that drop would be, if he can make it past the glass of the window.

“I can help you,” Glass says. The sun is down. Juno wants to scream.

“Will you keep spinning gold for me forever?” he hisses. “She’ll have me locked up until you get bored, or you forget to stop by, or I run out of things to bargain away to you. And if not, then this is it – an eternity of this room, and this straw, and all that fucking gold.”

“I can help you,” Glass says again, insistent. As Juno steps closer, he balks. Glass’ usually immaculate coat is rumpled, his trousers torn at the hem. His lips are bruised from being bitten – in anxiety? By someone? Juno shakes the thought away. “I can get you out of here and away from Miasma. For good.”

Juno knows how this shit goes. “I don’t have anything worth that kind of price,” he says. “What will you take in exchange?”

“A kiss.” Glass refuses to look away; Juno feels like straw on a spinning wheel, the very matter of him torn apart and molded into something golden. “And if that is too high a price, then I will accept something less valuable: my name.”

“You name,” Juno repeats dumbly. “Where would I find that?”

Glass looks like Juno had just punched him. The corners of his mouth twist, and the ugly humanity spills out of him again like water dripping from a leaky faucet. “Maybe you can ask your secretary to look it up,” he snaps, savage and defensive. “Do you accept the deal?”

The mention of Rita throws Juno for another loop, and he hears himself say, “Yes.” Juno’s voice, Glass’ bargain – what does Juno want more, this man’s true name or the bite of his teeth on Juno’s mouth? When has Juno grown so hungry, so ravenous?

Is that a human trait, or fey?

* * *

 

When the sun rises, Glass stays. Without the shroud of darkness, his tattered state is even more apparent. He stands barefoot, his silks streaked with filth, his mouth still bruised red – a pauper in a room brimming with gold. In his hand, he holds a crystal. He asks, “Would you like a shiny rock, witch?”

Miasma snarls, and launches herself forward. Juno knows that she will feint a dash to the left and slash her nails across Glass’ wrist until he drops the crystal. He knows that she will wrap her hands around Glass’ throat and squeeze until he turns cold. He sees it as though he is doing it himself, as though Miasma’s satisfaction is his own.

Juno says, “His life for the gold.” His voice quivers, and he wonders wildly if Miasma knows that she has been fooled and the spindles of gold are not his doing. She whirls on him, furious. Juno seeks out Glass’ eyes behind her shoulder, wishing that Glass would read his thoughts the way Juno had just glimpsed Miasma’s. He says, “Let him go, and I will spin your loom for the rest of my life. I don’t know why you need the gold so badly, or what you want with the mask and the crystal. I don’t care.” This, at least, he means truly. Miasma cocks her head, intrigued. The fey do not lie. “That’s my bargain,” Juno swears.

Glass lifts the crystal, and smashes it against the spinning wheel.

A light like the oceans floods the room and blinds them, so heavy that Juno almost feels it on his skin. He smells something burning, and thinks that it’s the straw. When he opens his eyes, he realizes that it is Miasma.

Glass kneels by the loom, shoulders hunched and palms bleeding with thousands of cuts so thin that they could be paper cuts. He looks at Juno and his skin seems to shift, his teeth bared and sharp, eyes almost yellow. Juno thinks he might cry. He sucks in a breath of burnt air and shuts his eyes to banish the tears, and when he opens them Glass is gone.

* * *

 

Juno stumbles out of Miasma’s gruesome castle, and laughs into the sunlight. He knows he must sound deranged, knows that he is not out of the desert yet. In fact, the desert stretches out around him for miles, an unyielding expanse of freedom and radiation poisoning. And yet.

“I know your name,” he shouts, delirious. “Come and let me settle my debts.”

He clutches the note in his hand, the one that he’d found tucked under the last spool of gold thread. The handwriting is cramped and sharp-edged, but the words are unmistakable:

_The gold will disappear. I fear that so will you._

_Your better half,_

_Peter Nureyev_

“I am here, Juno,” Peter says. He smiles sweetly. In the light, he looks nothing like Rex Glass. In the light, he looks no different than the way he’d looked in darkness – tender to the bone, leaning toward Juno like a flower. “You are free, and I am here. Pay your debt.” And Juno does.

Maybe they don’t have to trek across the sand – maybe the radiation poisoning is here in the warmth of their mouths, in Juno’s tongue tracing the sharp teeth that have haunted him, in Peter’s hands in Juno’s hair like they are searching for the strands they’d cut. Juno says, “Peter,” against his lips, and Peter freezes, then goes liquid and warm in his arms.

So this is what it feels like, Juno thinks, dazed, to hold the true name of a thing and love it. “I could swallow you whole,” Peter confesses, wrecked.

Juno kisses him again, and asks, “Why don’t you?”

**Author's Note:**

> "there is  
> no morning  
> only the end of night  
> the dull gold  
> of transforming  
> suffering"  
> -fanny howe, from 'the angels,' poetry (april 1973)


End file.
